St. Landry democrat., 1887-12-31


thing seemed to tell her that the great event
of her life was to be met here, near her
mothers grave and by the buried red shoes
of her infancy.
The war had proceeded year and more
when the Unstable conflict concentrated all
its levies and cannon in the valleys north OF
the Potomac.
Fierce and ragged were the columns of the
public enemy marching across the South
Mountain by the Brownsville road, and
dragging their artillery up into Solomons
Gap and hewing roadway along the ELK
Mountain to the brow at Harper's Ferry.
Terrific was the bombardment there,
and more astonishing was the smut
aneous battle in the neighborng gaps
of the South Mountain, where the Union
soldiery appeared victorious at last,
and the enemy, alarmed, came down from
Maryland Heights and formed his line OF
battle across Pleasant Valley.
Then, with the fall of Harper's Ferry, the
industrious destroyers took both their armies
off to the greater valley and fought all day,
battering the heavens black and dying by
thousands along the limestone ridge
Hetty Arnold saw these collisions from
rock in the woods. where she could stand and
peep over some felled trees upon the
sulphurous air and belching guns. The day
after the battle of Antietam she found
the woods filled with stragglers from
that tight-the cravens of the army-some
of them affecting to be wounded, but not
less dangerous to women and unarmed peo-
pie because of their flying from the battle
field.
Hetty repaired again to the rock, and as
she lay there, stretched upon the flat sum-
init, with a red-leaved vine festooning her
gray homespun robe of wool, she heard two
voices in the copse below saying:
This way I've tracked her; she's not
far off"
"What shall we do with her afterward ?"
Hetty saw the man pass his finger across
his throat and say:
Dead witnesses can't tell
A fear came upon the girl that almost
made her scream.
"Tve made way with my .four,' said the
man.
Il with tuo. There's a sentence of death
agin me; listed to be well hid"
Il served three years in the jug and set it
atire, and mizzled It's treat to kill-to see
| blood run. It's poorly"
The superstition came to Hetty that this
was her appointed hour-the red portent was
very close.
AS she gazed down from the rock in the
congealment of horror, her sight was ar
rested by something red coming along the
mountain path from the neighborlng noun
tain gap.
A man appeared in the uniform of zou-
ave-bright scarlet cap, scarlet jacket and
scarlet breeches, all relieved upon leggings
and sword-belt of white.
He was wounded, and Gmped upon
crutch rudely whitfield in the wood. His
blood, which had also stained one of his
sleeves as it issued from his arm.
As he painfully, slowly, moved onward,
Hetty Arnold felt fascination for the bright
red apparel of this man which partly made
her forget her imminent peril from the con-
fessed murderers below.
She knew this wounded man could not
rescue her; but his scarlet garments awoke
an instinct of delight amidst her terrors,
likethe oft-quoted fascination of the charmed
bird for the serpent's eye.
While she gazed there came whisper
from beneath:
Hes got a watchP
"And diamond!'
mo doubt purse!'
Have at him. trip him and stab him !"
Like the rushing of wild beasts, or the
flight of mountain pheasants, the convicts
leaped out, Dor" the Zouave officer to the
ground and sd his pockets and shirt
bosom.
The knife was raised above his throat to
shed his blood, when Hetty with frantic
strength tore stone from the ledge
where she stood, and flung it upon the
back of the stopping ruffian with the knife,
crying:
Don't murder that man. He is redr'
One ruffian cried out with pain and the
other with panic, and leaving the woman
they came to pollute and to kill they fled up
the mountain and out of sight.
Hetty threw herself down by the fallen
man. He was unconscious.
you cannot dien' she cried; you must
live, because you are red and was made for
you"
The zouave opened his eyes and looked
into Hetty's with both pain and pleasure on
his face, and finally spoke:
80, bella feminai Che sara, sara! ] do
not die, and so must love you"
Leaning upon her strong frame, his arm
around her shoulder, the stranger, fainting
twice with pain, made his way to Hetty's
house in the mellow September weather and
lay upon her bed; passing surgeon came
in and amputated his arm. He had fallen
from wall of rock in scaling the heights at
Brampton's gap, and piece of sandstone
falling with him had entombed him in q
pit, where his weakness prevented his cries
being heard until some days after the battle
a negro came that way to take frewood and
pulled him out.
He was easily seen to be an Italian-a
handsome person of brown hair and hazel
eyes, with delicacy and seriousness giving
him the tone of perfect respect for the wo-
man who had given him life. lodgings and
love.
AS for love, that was understood from the
moment of his rescue. Hetty frankly
said she had merely awaited him and he
accepted her sense of destiny as including
| his own.